Hi, I'm S.A. Bradley and welcome to Hellbent for Horror, a podcast devoted to all things related to horror, where I remind you that you used to love horror movies and you secretly still do. horrors, and they've been stand-ins for our real-life boogeymen since the beginning of storytelling. They let us exercise both personal and public demons from a safe distance without having to face the real world stuff at face value. Now, what do I mean by that? For an example,
I wouldn't want to watch a movie about the January 6th insurrection, but I would definitely watch werewolves take over the Capitol. We might watch a corrupt landlord get beaten to death with a baseball bat by a masked killer, but we don't want to do that in real life. However, every so often you meet someone that you think might take a swing or two at somebody. And with the films of director Izzy Lee, you get the feeling that making them has kept her out of jail more than once.
The first movie of Izzy's I saw was a five-minute short film called Rites of Vengeance, and it consisted of three nuns with baseball bats beating a pedophile priest to death on a church altar. Bang, right there. Izzy is a take-no-prisoners director making a statement. All killer, no filler.
Named as one of AV Club's top 10 female filmmakers for hire, Izzy Lee has blazed her own trail with over 20 uncompromising short films, from the blistering social commentary of the movie Rehome to hilariously absurdist Meat Friend.
Izzy has been very busy recently with the release of her first novella, I Can See Her Lies, through Dark Matter Inc., and her feature-length film debut, House of Ashes, recently won Best Director, Performance, and Cinematography at the Renegade Film Festival in February. House of Ashes will be playing the Salem Horror Film Fest May 3rd and the Chattanooga Film Festival on June 21st. Izzy Lee, thanks so much for being on the show.
Hello! Thanks for having me. Amazing introduction. I'm glad you enjoyed it. I guess the first question I ask everybody is, what was your first kiss with horror? What was the movie that got under your skin and hooked you? Man, okay, well, let's go back to the early 80s. And that would have to be, I don't know which I saw first. Or as a slate, the Edgar Allan Poe, Roger Corman, Vincent Price, AIP films. Hell yeah. Wow. Yeah. That's a really contrasting. I know.
But that's great. Did you have someone who was your first corrupt, or did you sneak in yourself and do that? Oh, it was all me all the time. I would just sneak watch a lot of stuff, and I got away with a lot because... You know, back then, parents weren't really around all that much, and you were left to fend for yourself. It was easy to do. Yeah, latchkey kids. I went through the same kind of thing.
And I got myself into a lot of trouble over that. And now horror is subjective, right? And everybody looks for something different and they define it in a different way. What is it that you look for in a horror film as an audience member? that's a great question oh wow no one's ever asked me that um i want to feel something i want to feel fear i want to feel tension i want to feel dread i want to feel released
and sometimes even a little humor. If a horror film doesn't make me feel anything, I know that I'm bored. And I know that it's not for me. Yeah. I'm not surprising having watched your films. And I love that even in, except for something like Rites of Vengeance, there's not a lot of humor in there because it's so fast. But a lot of times there's a lot of humor that's inside of your stuff, as well as, you know, really sharp edges to some of the things that you're talking about in subject matter.
You made a lot of short films, and if I remember correctly, you were about to make your first feature around the pandemic time, and then the pandemic hit, right? Wow, you have a really good memory. We got almost a million dollars out of like a 1.2 or 3 budget. to direct my first feature and guess what? The pandemic happened and it all went away.
Yeah, what a nightmare. And yet somehow it feels like you were able to, you didn't stop, right? I mean, of course you had to stop for a little bit like the rest of the world did. But after that, the genesis of making this film, I guess, would be what I'd like to talk about on here, because the pandemic didn't, it may have stopped that, but you then came up with an idea of how to do this film. Yeah. a curse and a blessing this whole covid pandemic like nightmare um
It forced me to stop. It took away my... it took away a lot of things it took away you know my festivals took away the ability to shoot took away um getting to go hang out And, you know, meet other filmmakers and collaborate. And that was really depressing. But what I did instead was I really studied the craft of filmmaking. I applied to and I got into six Sundance collab courses. I've read a lot of stuff on Film School and Studio Binder in particular has an amazing video library.
stuff you know you can just watch and learn and it's just it was a gift to actually to have that time because I am such a better filmmaker these days because of it so Fast forward to 2023 and I was offered a tiny bit of seed money. We raised the rest and my production partner and writing partner, Steve, kicked in the last bit for House of Ashes. We wrote it and filmed in January 2024. We had our world premiere in October 2024 at the Brooklyn Horror and we're still in the festival circuit.
Got it done. Wasn't the way I wanted, but it was a way to exist and make something happen. Yeah. Yeah, well, it's pretty amazing. And you mentioned going to conventions and going to film festivals and things like that and meeting a lot of people and hanging out. I guess that's what I wanted to talk about is that you got along with a lot of friends. If I look at the credit.
There's a lot of people that I know who are filmmakers as well. And so you ingratiated yourself with a lot of people, but it was also crowdfunded. So you want to talk a little bit about that? Yeah. Crowdfunding, I never wanted to do ever. I was part of a project helping raise money once about a decade, 11 years ago at this point.
And it's just, it is a job and a half and a half and a half and a half and it keeps going. And I never wanted to do it, but I didn't really have a choice. So here we are, I did it. I was really insanely grateful and humbled. And it really just overjoyed to see the outpouring of support. We raised 86%. In the first, I want to say 30 hours or 82%, one of those. And I just couldn't believe it. And I just.
you know had some had some tears some grateful tears and i i get to be a future filmmaker now and here we are yeah that's a lot uh when you started out what was the first short film that you made Well, I made a couple in high school and I made some in college. I didn't really put those out anywhere. It was the day and age where there were like five female filmmakers in the world, it seemed.
You know, there was like maybe two I could name off the top of my head, you know, and it would be, you know, Catherine Piccolo and, you know, Mary Lambert. And that's all I knew in the fucking 90s. And so. it didn't really seem to be a path that was allowed and you know later it's better it's not much better um there are still a lot of
roads to be paved, let's say. And yeah, it's just been a real long journey. I think the very first one I made a bumper for Fantastic Fest, and that was 2012, and they played it. And that was fun, but I didn't go because, you know, it was 30 seconds. And then I made I sort of caught the bug and made a film called Legitimate. Played like, you know, a couple here and there. And I was trying to figure out.
You know, and I had gotten so upset about the politics in this country. Oh, sweet summer child, 2012. You know, and I really liked it. You know, it was a new medium for me, really. I had only dabbled, of course, in college and high school, but I tried to see if this was a thing, and it was a thing, and I kept going, and that led to... What was the next one? I'm trying to remember. Pick it.
For Good Time Call and Rides of Vengeance, Rehome, The Obliteration of the Chickens, My Monster, Disco Graveyard. So many, so many. And they're all pretty hot, many of them, not all of them, but they have some pretty hot topics, hot-button topics inside of them, or they're rather transgressive, like I remember Innsmouth.
Some really insane visuals that got people going when I saw that in a festival as well. House of Ashes, you're still going on to some very strong topics. You're discussing the... fight over body autonomy that's happening right now. But it's also like around men who are false allies. There's gaslighting as control. There's victim blaming that's in this.
But all very much also feels a little bit like the pandemic is in there as well, because one of the things that I heard a lot about in the pandemic. was women who were trapped with their captors, with their abusers for a long period of time. Did that kind of weasel its way into the story as well? Um, I feel like it had to have because it was the first thing that I thought when everyone was going to lockdown was, holy shit.
I feel horribly for the women who are now insanely trapped and they're not going to be able to escape. You know, and it's just... What do you do with that, you know? It wasn't like sort of a conscious thing, I think, to put that into the script. but it was very much on my mind during the pandemic when we wrote it.
It was my partner, Steve, who had come up with the concept because he knows me very well. He knows what I like. He knows what makes me very passionate. And he came up with the concept of a woman under house arrest. And I don't remember if it was him or if it was myself that had the miscarriage.
house you know house arrest thing um but once we started going you know we would just write and is it's really difficult to remember like what's his and what's mine because we would go back over it he's great with concepts and i'm great with characters backstory dialogue and things like that he's also great with dialogue but like you know we're sort of like a yin and yang but there's also a venn diagram of where we meet too so um
Neither of us were happy about what's been going on in this country and of course now it's even worse and people have been jailed for miscarriage and we never set out to write a documentary in some sort of respect, but we saw where things were headed and Yeah. Well, the visual in that, the very beginning of the movie is really striking. Her covered in blood on the floor. And I don't want to give away too much of the story, but you've said that she's basically under house arrest.
And so the whole film pretty much takes place in one location with just a few people. And that really gives a sense of isolation. And I think it also adds a level of suspense and tension. when you are watching the characters slowly show their true faces. She's trapped. And there are certain things that happen. And the actress in here is really good. Fania Sanchez. Fania Sanchez. Yeah. She's amazing, right? Wow. Amazing. Because she just.
With her eyes is basically sitting there making you realize just how much danger she can be in in certain times. But it's also really interesting because she's a little bit different than some of your other characters. in the way that she starts from a place where she's pretty... Even though she didn't do anything that she could consider a real crime, the idea of the miscarriage just happens. I'm assuming the miscarriage happened because...
Her husband dies under strange circumstances, and it's deemed a suicide, but at first they think that she actually may have been involved in it. So that seems like it really twists her in a way. And for a while, we see the movie through her eyes in a very strange way. Were you thinking about something new with this character where she starts feeling not quite a victim, but definitely someone who feels as if she's responsible to being pushed through whatever else happens in the story?
Unfortunately, as women, we are made to feel like everything is our fault. You know, we internalize a lot of things. We are socialized to feel guilty, to feel responsible for things that are entirely out of our control. for what other people do for what our bodies do or don't do like it's ridiculous um and i wanted to explore that It's a harrowing sense of shame and guilt and they spiral together.
And I don't know that I see that a lot in cinema. I don't think that's really allowed to be funded. Let's be honest. You know, a lot of our stories are too much. for the society at a whole or at least the dudes that fund them and so it's kind of like If I've got one chance, who knows? Maybe this will be the only time I get to make a feature. I really don't know. I want to make it count. I've got a theater background. My two leads have theater backgrounds I specifically wanted.
us to be primarily ex-theater kids because I know how intense that training can be. And I really wanted to have my actors be able to reach a really dark, deep place. I had seen him in The Blood of the Dinosaurs and we would often play together in the same block on the festival circuit with Meet Friends. And so I had met him at Fantasia and I was really interested in working with him at some point. I didn't know what on or where, but I knew he could go.
creepy as hell I knew he could go dark I knew he could do happy and I knew like you know he's got this Anthony Perkins. And is it Timothy Holt? Yeah. Yeah. It's like a cross between the two. And I thought that was just such an amazing look. And I knew that I could really showcase that. Oh my god, I didn't know if I was gonna make this movie until I found someone like her. It took me something like eight or nine months to find this actress because
In LA, LA is wonderful. LA is great. There's so much talent there. But in terms of actors who can go that deep, they're harder to find. They're harder to find if they're... if you want like a theater background. And let's be honest, It is difficult to go to those places. It fucks up your nervous system.
It puts you on edge. It's very unpleasant. So I needed to find somebody really committed. And it took a while. And I got my heart broken a couple of times. You know, friends would sign on or like I would get close. you know it wasn't right for them or whatever I don't know but We found her, and I just knew that she could nail it. She nailed the audition. She nailed the callback. She loved, loved, loved the script.
And I just had such a good feeling. And I just said, all right, well, let's go. We jumped into pre-production. And a couple months later, we were filming. It was fucking nuts. Faina and Vince do some really interesting things, and you do an interesting bit of sleight of hand in the very beginning, because Vince plays Mark Winters, who's her ex-boyfriend from long ago. High school, yeah. Yeah, who essentially comes back into her life to be a protector, it seems, after her husband dies.
And when we first see him, the reason that, I mean, he's creepy, but he almost seems ineffectual. And so you play a very smart thing by having Lee Boxleitner being the probation officer. who is intimidating and huge and essentially says his lines with a certain gleeful venom. And he's taking Vincent and he's just basically pinning him to the wall. So because of that, we don't see him as a threat at all. We see him as somebody who is, man, if nothing else, he can't protect her.
And so it's really interesting as we see the movie change a little bit. The characters change. Vina is really interesting because in the very beginning, I'm not sure. I was getting like the feelings of like Catherine Deneuve in Repulsion. Oh my God, amazing. Yeah, instead of a rabbit, it's the bird. And I was like going, you know, she's kind of disconnected the grief and the guilt. She's no longer in this world. She's trapped in this place with some guy.
who seems to be protecting her, but there's little pieces of control. And there's little things like... He blames her for when things are moved. Don't move my stuff. So you get this feeling unconsciously or consciously that... She has to stay in this one very narrow lane. And everyone that's involved with her, all the men in her life, are letting her go down one rail and only one rail at all. Yeah.
It's a hard, hard, hard thing being a woman in this country and in most, I think. I wanted to really explore the chipping away of a relationship. More than that, it's a relationship that they're not ready to have. He's there out of... his own selfish needs and she accepts this because she literally has nobody else. She's been ostracized. You know, her parents have disowned her. She doesn't have friends. She doesn't have her vet clinic anymore.
She doesn't know what to do and she's afraid to be alone. And so... This is the compromise. And yeah, they haven't seen each other for a while. I want to say like, say 15 years. And he just suddenly shows up in her life. And it was... I really also wanted to explore the nice guy syndrome. Right. You know, presents themselves as very helpful and wonderful and nice.
And they're really fucking not. And I wanted to show how that erodes over time, how these barriers fall off and how the reality sets in of like, oh. I'm in danger. I'm in danger, you know, and it's like it's too late because that's what happens to women. It's very, very dangerous and sad and all sorts of things. Yeah. It's really interesting because, like I said, there's these different feels that the movie has, which is kind of intriguing. You have...
almost this repulsion kind of thing where she's kind of paralyzed by the death and it seems as if she's not quite there with reality. But then there's like this psychological thing almost like a reverse misery where she's trapped with this guy and at first it seems like they're going to be helpful and then it goes bad. Then there's a ghost story that's also happening and we're not sure at certain points.
Is the ghost real? Or is this more of her finding a way to maybe strike back, but in a way that she can say, well, it's supernatural. It wasn't me. It was the ghost. Isn't that fun? Yeah. Yeah. I really love subverting expectations and I like to play with what's reality, what's real, what's not. I think it's more interesting than something that's just, say, a mirror straight drama. You know what I mean? I love...
weird stuff you can get away with. I love the leeway. You know, I feel like it's a cinematic equivalent of running with scissors, you know, like you might cut yourself and the audience or you know what? I don't know. It's art. And it's been really fun to explore so many different possibilities. Things do happen, you know. Well, there's some really interesting things that are put in there that what I loved was at moments I had the ability to rewind.
But rewind and go, did I just see like a body suddenly rising in the background there? And I was like, that's freaking cool because it's happening. Wow. A character is doing something that seems as if it might draw a ghost, negative energy. So Mark might be in a situation where he's throwing things away that he's not supposed to be throwing away because he's become protective and he doesn't want this.
old husband around anymore in any kind of detritus and in the background there's like this plastic in the in the attic i think it is and it's just slowly going up like the angrier he gets the more he's calling the ghost And there's these strange things where... He gives her drugs at one point. He like drugs her.
because she's, and he knows, I mean, what was the motivation there that was so creepy and angering because he knows she's under house arrest. He knows that there's this guy who wants to put her away forever. And yet he risks everything by making her drop ass without her knowledge. He's just a selfish dick. You know, there are a lot of them out there and they don't really need more motivation than getting laid. Yeah. Yeah.
I wasn't sure if a lot of what we were watching was kind of an acid flashback. There's one moment that really hit me where there was a character, a creature. We'll call it a creature. There's a hallucination that she's having and a garbage bag is opening and something is crawling out of there. And then she wakes up, it seems, and she's handcuffed. And I'm like...
oh no, the parole officer's shown up and she's been drug tested or something and she's about ready to go to jail. And then that's not what happened. It's a really interesting thing that you're doing where there are times I wasn't quite sure what moment was reality and what moment was a hallucination. That's what you were going for. That was what I was going for. So it is lovely to hear that. Thank you.
What was the motivation for her? You mentioned that she was a veterinarian, and there's this whole thing of her trying to, a bird obviously dies, hits the window, but she's like, I'm going to help you, and puts it in a cat caddy, one of those carriers. And she puts a bandage around its leg. And what was the idea? Why were they that? You know, there's the backstory where it's simply that they're caring people.
And they take care of little beings that can't help themselves. And that bird is clearly and obviously dead when we first see it. And it's not something that she can accept. She's lost her husband, she's lost her baby, she lost her vet clinic. That bird is, simply put, a metaphor for her. She has to try to save it, even though the audience, as we can see, is clearly dead. She can't even admit that to herself because it is.
It's too much after everything else she's been through, all the trauma, the pain, the grief. And, yeah. It's pretty sad. Yeah, there's a lot of really interesting symbolism. Mark is a model maker for some reason. He's making a little house out of matchstick. And yeah, talk about burning down the house. Really intriguing character in that way.
There are only a couple other characters that are in here, and a lot of that happens on the outside, the exterior. So she's kind of in this womb, right? She's stuck in a womb inside of this house. There are people that are standing outside. There are people who are trying to look through the windows at certain points. What is Lexi Shock Talks all about? Lexi is a tabloid influencer, TikToker, journalist type person.
And she has been, her backstory is that she's been a little a little too zealous in her other pursuits, and this is a shot to get a book deal. And she will stop at nothing to get the sensationalist news out of this poor couple, specifically Mia. who is trapped there you know she's going in with the angle harassing these people Oh, is Mia a murderer? Is she a serial killer? Because she's been suspected of killing her first husband, her only husband, Adam.
perhaps her baby you know there's um Unfortunately, we live in a time where Social media is absolutely out of control. It feels like there's misinformation 24-7. There's wild things. There's stuff that you're like, I can't tell if this is real or if this is... some sort of propaganda or joke or now we're going to have like these deep fakes with ai and and things like that it's not And so I had to sprinkle in a little modernism there, you know, that reflects our reality.
Simply put, you know, me is just being hounded by everyone, you know, even Even the women in the film, the very few of them that there are, the mom and Lexi, they're not friends. Right. And this also speaks to- Sometimes misogyny can be so internalized by girls and women. that they try to be the token at the table and they turn their backs on their own kind. And, you know, we see it now and then. And I think we see it in politics quite a bit. You know, people voting for their...
voting against their best interests, let's say. And it's really upsetting. You know, it's really disappointing. And so I wanted to touch on that a little bit with Lexi, with that character. There's a lot of interesting visual imagery here. There's ashes. It is the house of ashes, but there's the husband's ashes are there. There's a wisp of smoke that shows up every so often. And we, of course, have a ghost.
So it was reminding me of memory, right? The idea of good memories, bad memories, stuff that doesn't kind of go away. It's intrusive in its own way. What were you going for with the ghosts and the myths? I mean, the mist is a simple visual cue to know that something's going on, something that's not really of this world, you know, something spooky. There's some spectral activity happening.
And the ghost is the ghost. The ghost will do whatever the fuck it wants to do. The ghost is very, very angry at first, and then it turns out to be a little helpful later. But the ghost is trying to actively terrorize both of these people. There is a point where the ghost tells her to open her eyes and he means that. in that sense like wake up you have to like
You've got to look around and see who you're living with. So, you know, Mia and the ghost, they come to this understanding. And she loves who this person was. that sort of becomes a little bit of a buoy of hope for her. Even just in the sense that like there's something in the afterlife, you know, because I think that's a comforting thing. I mean, I don't know. We're all made from energy. Energy doesn't die. So where does it go?
You have to go somewhere. That's one of the interesting things that I was thinking because you mentioned it. It kind of terrorizes both of them. I mean, they both bleed at certain points because of the things that the ghost was doing. And so I was wondering about what was happening with the ghost. Is the ghost, where is it trying to get its anger? Is it just trying to get attention?
It felt like there are different types of ghosts, vengeful ghosts, romantic ghosts, tragic ghosts. What would you say was this kind of ghost here? I think it's all of the above. I think just like... human beings we you know a ghost is the energy of it. We're made of multitudes and we experience all of these things. We're not just a one emotion human being, you know, we have multitudes.
I thought it would be really interesting to have a lot of different ghostly activities. I didn't want just an angry ghost. I didn't want just... like a funny ghost or a romantic ghost or a helpful ghost you know i wanted to explore the whole gamut of what this ghost might be feeling in the afterlife and what is its motivations throughout the story, you know what I mean? Getting attention. trying to wake you up, trying to send you memories, trying to help you, trying to do other things, you know.
Yeah, it's really interesting because if you take away the ghost angle or you say that the ghost is. maybe a figment of her imagination. It was reminding me of Let's Scare Jessica to Death. There's this whole thing of these people kind of conspiring around her. The movie also reminded me of Suspiria.
Because of, I mean, the color. I mean, it may be very obvious, but it's very vivid in the color. And the cinematography is really amazing because it's very sharp in certain ways. There's different focal grounds. But talk a little bit about the color because blues, greens, and reds were really big in that movie. Yeah. I mean, I think as try as we might, we can't ever escape our influences.
You know what I mean? You know, going back to those Edgar Allan Poe films that were so colorful, oh my God, so lush and decadent. It feels like you could reach into the screen and touch it. The same with Suspiria. You know, I watched a lot of Mario Bava and Argeno growing up, you know, as a teenager. less now these days but i did just pick up the 4k as this area that i'm excited to check out oh yeah um it's i'm sure unbelievable um it's just
Like the emotions. I think colors, the intensity, saturation, they should match what you're going for, you know. Something's going on that's intense. Let's have an intense color that will totally fit that, you know. If it's going to be sort of a cold scene, then we're going to go with blue. If we're going to go with... A passionate scene, we're going to go with magentas and... Deep Reds and, you know, things like that. But if you...
If you watch the beginning of the film, you'll notice that it's very desaturated and it's very gray and plain. And then as the story goes on and things become more crazy and intense. Kinetic, the colors get crazy and intense and kinetic to reflect.
what's going on with the characters and i really wanted to have a lot of beautiful visuals to go along with this crazy insane surreal journey what is real what is not you know i mean yeah Yeah, it was really cool because there were moments where the colors changed subtly through the scene.
So it could very well be because the emotions were changing. And there were moments where I was going, wow, this has that look of like from beyond. There's like that magenta and blue with a kind of a rimming of the edge light. And it was really interesting. And I didn't even think of it until you mentioned Poe, that Mask of the Red Death, where every one of those rooms. Yeah.
Colors of all that. That's one, if you get a chance to see the Blu-ray or the 4K, that and Blood and Black Lace. That one's almost 3D. Bava's work in that is outrageous. And the color that he's doing in there is astonishing. But yeah, it felt like the color was certainly a character in the film as well.
Yeah, it really is. We had a blast with that. Those are some of my favorite moments on set was, you know, working with camera team to... to set up these lightings and the cloud that you see i built that oh really i physically built that cloud um it's made out of a sheet and pillow stuffing and we put colored lights in it and then um
In post with VFX, we had it rotate. And there's also the physical smoke in there. That's actual like real smoke there too. Yeah. So like everyone thinks it's VFX, but it's like... I had no idea it was thoroughly almost all practical because it just does not seem. So you also have a thing, well, one of the things I wanted to say about the coloring as well is the use of blue, that idea of coldness and stuff, but it also accentuates the light.
on the ankle bracelet. So she's at home, she's imprisoned, and so she has to wear the monitor all the time. And that's kind of like a time bomb waiting to go off. So there's a certain level of suspense. When we see her go into the bed and it just lights up. Oh, my God. Yeah, you know when it's blinking, something's about to go down, right? Yeah.
And sound. There's some interesting sounds that are going on. But who did the music for you? Because there's really interesting, tense music where it's not quite an orchestral sound, but it is just this tone. Some of that is sound design that my editor Anna Rotke did, but a lot of it or most of it would be from my composer Antoine Lamothe, who is in the industrial band The Deadly Apples out of Montreal. Yeah, he was just doing some shows in Peru at this massive rock festival.
I met him up there. I had met him online and he had seen the Kickstarter. And had thrown his hat in the ring and I had somebody else. And that person didn't end up working out. And then so I connected back with Antoine, which, you know, I just call him Tony. We met up at Fantasia when I was in post. I was up there with a short and also working with my post team in the hotel room.
hit it off and uh yeah he knocked it out of the park man like i really wanted some resner ross soundtrack type stuff that was in that ballpark not a ripoff but um another one of my huge influences you know it's just you can't really escape what you deeply love and you deeply love it because that's also what you're made of that's also what you cling to you know what i mean so i think You just have to lean into things. And sometimes it's not even conscious, you know, like I wasn't.
doing the colors because I'm like, let's make this look like a giallo. It was after we shot, I'm like, did I make a secret giallo? A little bit, a little bit. Like we don't have like a whole, you know, police investigation thing that sort of drags down the pace or anything like that. But, you know.
Yeah, there's some really cool stuff in there. And you also kind of create a place, right? What's the name of the town that this is supposed to be taking place in? Oh, well, that is a fun callback to my first modern short. And it is from Representative Todd Akins, who said, if it's a legitimate rape...
A woman's body has a way of shutting that whole goddamn thing down. And wouldn't that be fun to, you know, pretend like we're magical. We're fucking unicorns. We can just do that. That's great. Yeah, I wish I had that power. That's fucking great. I'm glad I asked the question. So it's taking place in this fake town. But can you tell us a little bit about what that town is supposed to represent? It's oppression. You know, it's far right.
Hands on your uterus all the time everywhere. Akinsville is in the fictional East California with LA in the background and all this nonsense. That's right. It's like. Again, with the being jailed for miscarriage, we wanted to show a very near this could happen future. I hope not to be prophetic with like splitting up California into East and West or North South or anything. Who the fuck knows at this point. You know, it just.
It's like a Twilight Zone episode where it is very close to the society that you're living in. Could happen. Yeah. Well, that's what hit me. It felt like it was a small town. It was like in 29 Palms. Is that where it was shot? 29 Palms is where we shot the desert stuff. We shot the rest of it at a house just outside of LA. I mean, technically it is greater LA. It's down in Mount Washington. Okay. So that's one of the things that hit me at the end. I was going, wait, we...
did not know anything about there being LA anywhere near. So it was kind of like, wow, it felt like you were saying... just a little bit down the road, it can be there as well. Almost like there could be this infection of a small town kind of thing heading into LA itself. Yeah. you never know man yeah it doesn't happen let's fucking hope not well anyway uh this has been a lot of fun to be able to talk about this movie um what
I could say that what you're working on now, but what is it that's really exciting you right now that you're seeing in film? If there's anything that you're feeling like there's kind of a breath of fresh air out there. Oh, man. I really loved Companion. Have you seen Companion? Yeah. So good. So good. So smart and really funny. And just a tight as hell script.
and the actors were great you know if um anyone watching this hasn't seen companion it's about um A young lady, I'm sure she's like early mid-twenties, she is a girlfriend and she goes to a really... supportive girlfriend and very self-deprecating and the same sort of thing where Faced in shame, has anxiety, worries about shit all the time, will do anything for her man. And he's sort of... You know, it's played by Jack Quaid. I think his name is Jack, right? Yeah, he's great.
loving it but also standoffish a little bit and and seems to take advantage of her and all that um come to find out she's an ai sex bot and she's at this house with uh this big huge rich guy's house with him and a bunch of his friends and that guy ends up did and uh you know it turns out like just like in westworld you can you know, fiddle around with these
These levels of aggression and everything else and things go really bad. And it's awesome. It's so smart. I love that very much. Stuff like that I'm really excited about. I'm really excited to see. Megan 2.0 because that's another AI female murder bot you know and I hear it's like it's Megan but it's Yeah. Yeah. I've heard a lot of early, really good things about it. So I'm excited to see that.
I have to say, I really loved the beginning of your film and the end of your filling is the last two shots in your film. That's pure Izzy Lee. I was like, there it is. There's Izzy. Those last two shots are just amazing. Oh, thanks. Thanks. We changed that in the edit. We weren't really sure if we wanted to go out with like a fuck yeah or like. something really somber and sad and it was
We were in LA with the editor, figuring this out. And three of us, Anna, Steve, and myself, we were like, well...
Is this really the way we should go? You know? And... i just i had to think for a minute i'm like all right give me five minutes let me pace around and think because i like the sadness but at the same time I just love the vengeance part I love the fuck you part and so we really really really brought that out we changed the ending and we changed a couple of things we cut We caught a scene where she slaps him really hard. And instead, you know, we took that out.
We had the drugs come back in again. And we had these other options. And then we're like, okay, okay, okay, we've got it. We're going to ramp this up and then quickfire editing at the end. And we're going to... We're going to give some people some fucking thrilling, beautiful, fuck you vengeance because we don't get enough in this world. It seems like that's my brand, so. I think it is. And that made me very happy when I saw it because I think it was the right answer because we've been.
stuck with this feeling the whole time and even in the end she well I don't want to give away the end but she is part of what happens the comeuppance that happens but there's also she's assisted by the ghost in a way once the ghost is gone once what has happened happens then it's like her 100 she just looks down it's like you know now you know you may have put your footprint elsewhere earlier in the film now i'm going to put my little mark on you and i thought that's a callback
Yeah. And you know, we, we, we just really needed that. Yeah. That was always in the script, but like. the last part where she's you know dumping in the ashes and sort of saying goodbye it was like a bittersweet thing and um The first thing that had tipped me off was like, fine, I was having trouble with it when we were shooting it. We were losing light, so we did a whole bunch of takes.
you know we went back to set and uh that was actually our last shooting day that we shot that last scene and then we had to you know double back and do something else But it sort of tipped me off to be like, all right, well, maybe this isn't the right choice and we'll think about this more. And yeah, I'm just, yeah, I'm glad because I feel like having it. Having the film have been so heavy. Yeah. Which is why I put in the humor here and there and there to dissipate some of that.
I feel like it was the right choice to end it on having the relief of getting out of there and moving on with your life. Yeah, and the music, the punk song at the end, the thrash song at the end, really. Hits that beat perfectly for this. So I know that you've talked about your influences and things that get in there unconsciously. Is there anything that you're consciously interested in doing next? Is there anything that is an inspiration that you want to try and what you're next?
story might be is it going to be writing is it going to be filmmaking i mean i'm writing right now i'm co-writing a book uh based off a script that i've been trying to get made And I don't want to talk too much about it because, you know, all of that, but it's. A little similar in terms of a woman against the world. In fact, there are two of them, but they have to come together first to unite against the common threat.
And they don't do that for a while, not as a mother and a daughter, an adult daughter. And they're estranged and they're sort of trapped in this place for other wildly different... Like, you know, totally different reasons. So that is mostly also one location. There's a lot of fuck you in that too. A lot of fuck you to the patriarchy and things like that. I just need to do it. I'd love to adapt.
I can see your eyes. I think that would be fun. I wrote it to be somewhat cinematic because that's the way I think, but also... I would love to adapt it. And I know like what kind of cool, spooky images that I can use for reasons and things like that. And that's about, um,
A woman who's in also another bad relationship. But... she has the ability this weird weird weird supernatural ability to know when people are lying to her and she sees this physical manifestation of black oily bubbles pop up on their face and dissipate and i think that is really scary. And I think that'd be a horrifying thing to live with. I'm like, Are you not okay? Or is this actually happening? It's very similar.
And she goes on a quest to find out what happened to her missing mom, who disappeared in 1979 as a rising Hollywood actress. In the meantime, her daughter is also seeing... things but even more terrifying things and so she's got a lot of A lot of crosses to bear there too. I don't know if you've checked it out. Yeah, I have your book. Thank you. There's some nice similar vengeance at the end as well.
Well, thank you so much for that information. You know, you mentioned before that we're living in, I mean, you have to be an idiot to not notice that we're living in really tough times. And there were moments in the 80s for some of us that were really tough too. Art gets us through some things. Was there a movie that really hooked you? It doesn't even have to be horror, but a movie that you went, yes, I'm going to get through this fucking thing because of a movie like that.
Are you surprised? Not surprised. That movie surprised me so much. I forget what else was in at the same time, but one of my friends, and he usually had bad taste movies, like we should go see Robocop. And I looked at the poster and I'm like going, oh no, this is going to be like some, I thought it was going to be some arch right wing kind of thing, right? And I walk in and I'm like going, oh my God, I left there like clicking my heels going, I cannot believe how good this movie was.
So good. I am, I am honored to share a birthday with Paul Verhoeven. Oh, wow. Not the same year, of course, but thank goodness. Yeah. Yeah. I always loved his work, but like. I saw it in the theater in its theatrical run. It was really young, of course. And probably shouldn't have been there. And I was terrified by a lot of that. That's scary. There's a lot of horror movie elements in that film. There's so much good political satire that... even as a kid i was just like this is amazing
And I love the way that, again, feeling. I love the way that I felt coming out of that movie. Yeah. That's the thing that's astonishing about that movie is that it has some really darkest pitch stuff. It's kind of like Return of the Living Dead, probably the darkest movie possible. But you're laughing because they know how to balance the tone, right? There's absurdism. And yet there's still really disturbing dark stuff and horror that's in there and, and pathos.
I mean, the whole thing of Murphy, you know, and they're kissing the robotic head when you're the cameras, the POV of Murphy and she's drunk and her glasses like that. She kisses the screen. A little bit of lipstick is on there. Heartbreaking. It's funny and it's heartbreaking at the same time. Bitches leave. Yeah. Unbelievable stuff. Now with that, what do you think? Is the importance of movies in during times like this, where it's really, really rough right now. Well.
I can say from so much experience growing up and the pandemic, and right now, that I use films as an escape. Now those films are all across the board. Like I put on Roadhouse again, the other night, the original, the other one doesn't exist for me. And I'm like, I just watched this earlier in the year. Like, what is, why do I need to watch this? And I. thought about it and i said oh i know i need some street justice i need somebody actually being held
you know, to consequences for their actions. I need some justice. I think a lot of us do right now. The pandemic, we needed to watch. We were living in a tiny apartment with two cats and hardly any space, and it was a nice place, but... Man, we got claustrophobic. And so we just went on a tear. And he's like, what are the craziest films that we can find and watch? Every Nicolas Cage. Off the fucking meter. Snake eyes. All of it.
I mean, that was where Meat Friend was born. Like all this like crazy shit that we had to watch. Like, well, let's do something crazy ourselves. And we moved out to California in the pandemic. You know, a month and a half later, we went down to Burbank and shot Meat Friend. Tell me, we got to talk about Meat Friend a little bit because this was something that at first I was like, what the fuck is she doing?
And then I couldn't get it out of my head. And so what was the genesis of that? That's just so atypical and yet it's so perfect. That was another Steve plus me creation. It's just feeling insane ourselves. We felt insane during this pandemic. I feel insane now. Maybe I've always been insane. Like, I don't know. But it also feels like a sane reaction to an insane world. Do I feel insane or is the world?
You know, it's the children who are wrong. No, it's just, I think we lived in a really, we live in a really fucked up culture. And so. It was our way of sort of processing all of the insane crap that we went through. Yeah. Nonsensical, but also it's my most successful film. Yeah. How crazy is that? Right. It's on arrow video player, man. Like, yeah.
Yeah. Oh, and it's Easter time, so it's topical again. Right. For those that haven't seen it, this is essentially a girl and her meat product that becomes sentient. And it's had prison time. And it's trying to be like a Captain Kangaroo kind of thing in her life. And it's just one of the most screwed up fucking things you've ever seen. And you can't help but laugh because you buy into it completely. Who's doing Meat Friend, by the way? Is that Steve? That is Steve. Yeah. Yeah.
Just magnificent stuff between House of Ashes and that. I mean, talk about range. I mean, here's the thing. I need to lighten up sometimes from the darkness. And I love really good comedy.
stuff that's in Robocop, stuff that's... maybe unintentionally or potentially Nicolas Cage going off the rail like I love that stuff because it's hilarious it's weird as hell it's funny and it makes me feel something um so yeah i mean horror and comedy are two sides of the same coin i've said it so many times it's all about timing and you know different tones of course but
Well, Izzy, if there's anybody that I know that I watch the movies that make me feel something, it's certainly you. You have a lot of oomph right there in every one of your movies. Uh, you want to talk a little bit about what you've got coming up? Uh, I mean, in the way of like where this is going to show and, uh, and anything else that you want to talk about? Yeah, man. I mean.
We're going to go home to Massachusetts and have our New England premiere at Salem Horror Fest. And that's going to be really fun. I'm going to go to Chattanooga, which is one of my favorite festivals. Crazy, so much fun. Chris Dorch runs a really tight ship. You can tell how much he loves cinema. After the physical festival, he does a virtual one.
And it's the most fun virtual festival ever because they do introductions they have punk rock and metal playing they do funny they tell you like anecdotes and they have watch parties on their discord server and it's almost like being at the the real festival because it's so much fun
And I love CFF very much. So I'm super excited to be there. And we are planning an LA screening at the end of May. And I wish I could tell you about that, but I can't because it's not 100% set in stone and all that stuff. That would be a West Coast premiere. Yeah, that'd be awesome. And do keep me informed on that. I'd love to drop down and take a look at it.
on the big screen. And I love Chattanooga as well. I got to see Kayla Janisse's folk horror documentary there and it blew me away. Are you going to come this year? They've got a lot of cool stuff. I can't make it this year. Yeah, I can't make it this year, but my heart will be there and I can't wait until I can hop down there again.
Izzy, thank you so much for coming and being a guest on our show. And I want to also thank everybody that's out there for watching us one more time and listening to us one more time. Just remember to say horror and remember to enjoy every horror movie, like enjoy every sandwich. Take care, everybody, and stay hell-bent.
And thanks for listening to the show. Hellbent for Horror was written and broadcast by me, S.A. Bradley, and produced by me and Lisa Gorski. You can find more on our website, hellbentforhorror.com, and I'm also on Facebook at facebook.com. forward slash hellbentforhorror and my Twitter handle is hellbenthorror. please hit that subscribe button to get H4H hot off the press. And if you can do a review on iTunes or whatever app you listen to us on,
That really helps people get to find us. And now for some hellbent for horror news. The podcast is available on some more outlets now, so you can listen to H4H on Spotify, iHeartRadio, and TuneIn Radio, as well as the regular iTunes, Android. and Amazon apps. And let there be swag. H4H t-shirts are now on sale. We have a store on tpublic.com with a bunch of hellbent for horror designs.
and you can have your choice of t-shirts, sweatshirts, hoodies, coffee mugs, something horrible beautiful for you or that someone special. The link to the merchandise store is on our website, hellbentforhorror.com. Until we meet again, stay healthy.